


Bad Tidings

by jolecia



Series: Banshee AU [1]
Category: Poldark (TV 2015)
Genre: (as in sanson), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Banshee Elizabeth, Banshees, Canonical Character Death, F/M, First Meetings, Pre-Relationship, s1 & 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-03 17:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17288171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolecia/pseuds/jolecia
Summary: George Warleggan doesn’t believe in the supernatural. Just before the Queen Charlotte sets sail on its maiden voyage, he’s proven wrong. In other words, the first instalment of the George x Elizabeth banshee AU that I've been working on.





	1. Chapter 1

“Francis, aunt, how are you?”

It was the day of Charles Poldark’s wake, and George Warleggan watched sullenly from his place beside the refreshments table, where his uncle and Dr Choake were having a dreary discussion about the ills of society at large, as the deceased man’s nephew headed over towards the corner in which Agatha Poldark was sequestered, Francis standing at her side, staring at nothing in particular. The question was, George couldn’t help but think, a rather foolish one, however expected it may be. Francis had always worn his heart on his sleeve, and as such the fact that he was very much the worse for wear was written clearly all over his face, and as for Agatha…well, he wasn’t entirely sure _she_ even had a heart, he thought, somewhat uncharitably.

“I imagine we have seen better days” George, who had now completely tuned out Dr Choake upon realising that he was beginning to warm to the subject of purging, heard Francis say in reply, his tone dull and grim.

Agatha snorted into her glass of port. George wrinkled up his nose in distaste.

“Better days indeed,” she scowled. “These are dark times for the Poldarks—you mark my words.”

“Aunt, please…”

“You may ignore the signs, Francis, but they’re there nonetheless. You heard it, did you not, just as I did? The wailing, the night before he died.”

“It was the wind, aunt” sighed Francis in a long-suffering tone. It sounded as if he had had this argument one too many times.

“It was not the wind,” retorted Agatha heatedly. “It was a perfectly still night, and besides, no gust of wind has ever sounded like that. It was a spirit, come to warn us of our misfortune—that’s what it was!”

Ross, who had been watching the exchange silently, seemed at a loss for what to say to this. A little further along, George discreetly raised a sceptical eyebrow in the old woman’s direction. He had never been one for superstition. As common as it was amongst many Cornishfolk, he had always counted himself as a fairly rational man, and had little time for such things. Let the vulgars and the likes of that horrible old witch indulge in their tales and traditions all they wish, but he had no intention of being taken in by such trifles.

“If you say so, aunt” grumbled Francis, glaring down darkly at his port before raising the glass to his lips and swallowing its contents in one long draught. It couldn’t be clearer that he too shared George’s opinion on his aunt’s love of portents of doom and gloom, for all that he did not appear to have the energy or the inclination to argue the point at that moment. In fact, he probably resented it even more, considering that, as he lived in the same house as her, coming into frequent contact with that particular tendency of hers was unavoidable. George could hardly blame him for that. If he had faced the prospect of endless hours alone with that abominable woman ranting about spirits and omens just after his father had died, he might have been tempted towards drink as well. Then, glancing at his uncle out of the corner of his eye, he reminded himself that he was not best placed to judge the vices of other people’s relatives.

They didn’t stay long at the wake—Uncle Cary had soon become impatient to return home, and George had had too much experience of socialising in his uncle’s presence not to recognise this as a sign that remaining overlong would only lead to horrific embarrassment on his part. As such, they made their regrets to a slightly disappointed Francis, before heading back to Cardew. The rest of the day passed much like any other—he worked, he took dinner in his study, he worked some more. At some point in the evening, Ambrose skulked into the room and dozed off under his desk, pawing lazily at one of its legs in his sleep. He saw nothing of Uncle Cary in all that time and that, he told himself, was how he liked it. He chose to ignore the vast, empty silence, filled only by the monotonous ticking of the grandfather clock on the far wall, telling him otherwise.

It was late into the evening—well past eleven o’clock—when the wind began to pick up outside. He paid no mind to it, absorbed in a hefty stack of papers relating to a potential investment in the shipbuilding industry. It looked promising, he thought, though he had no wish to jump into it. He had never been much of a gambling man, for all that he enjoyed a game of cards as much as any other, and he was just as inclined to be cautious in matters of business as in matters of pleasure. No, he would not advance the capital right away, he decided. He would bide his time a little while yet, and think on it more in the morning.

He had been so deep in thought that the chime of the clock startled him. Blinking up at it, he saw that it had reached midnight. There was a definite chill in the room, he noticed, now that the fire had burnt so low in the grate that it was barely more than embers, and he could hear the spattering of rain against the glass of the large, arch-shaped windows of the study. A sudden, bone-deep tiredness came over him and, with a soft sigh, he laid the papers down in a neat pile and massaged his temples wearily. He could feel a headache coming on, no doubt a result of staring at endless figures for hours upon end with little but the light of a few candles which sat upon his desk to see them by. Perhaps it was time to retire.

With that in mind, he stood with a slight yawn and began to put out the candles. His sudden movement awoke Ambrose, who followed him out of the room, trotting quietly at his heel as he headed for his bedchamer. Once they reached their destination, the shaggy dog yawned hugely before curling up at the foot of his master’s bed and promptly fell straight back asleep. George stepped carefully around him, slipping out of his tailcoat and draping it over the chair near his bedside. He undressed methodically, folding up the rest of his clothes in a neat pile before donning his nightshirt. After a moment’s deliberation, he pulled his silk dressing gown on as well—he had forgotten to ask for a fire to be lit in his bedchamber that evening, and as such there was a biting cold in the room that he did not at all like.

He was just about to slip into bed when a sudden gust of wind roared outside the house, rattling the frame of the window so hard that for one moment he thought it might come clean off. Cautiously, he headed over to it, pulling back the drapes and laying a palm over the pane to still its trembling. Outside, it was completely black, but even if there had been some light to illuminate the surrounding land, he doubted whether he would have been able to see it through the cascade of rain pummelling against the glass. With a slight stab of unease, he remembered that Agatha Poldark, for all her bizarre ramblings, had in fact been right in one thing—the night before Charles had died had indeed been a still one, without even the slightest hint of a breeze. The question was, then, what had made the noise that Agatha and Francis had both heard, which the latter had been so convinced was the wind?

“Don’t be ridiculous” he muttered to himself scathingly. The day he took Francis’ mad old aunt’s words seriously would be the day hell froze over. There was no point dwelling on it, especially not when he had far better things to think about. Nevertheless, as he shut the drapes, headed back to the bed and slipped under the covers, pulling them tight around him to ward against the cold, his mind could not help but wander to that overheard conversation. There was something niggling in the very back of his thoughts, some place hidden and forgotten, as if something of what was said reminded him of another thing, though what it was, he mused as he closed his eyes, he had no idea.

 

* * *

 

Time passed, and George barely thought on Agatha’s strange words again—after all, many things Agatha said were strange, and far too much had happened for him to linger on them. Francis, who had been somewhat undercutting his own efforts of restoring Trenwith and Grambler’s fortunes through his gifts to Margaret, the woman he had found for himself in place of a wife—Francis was, as far as George could tell, determined to remain a bachelor for as long as possible, however much the mothers of Cornwall’s array of unmarried young ladies may have sought to change that—eventually lost the mine to George’s cousin, Matthew, who had elected to return to Cornwall after a time away in London. Ross, by contrast, had been doing surprisingly well with Wheal Leisure, but his setting up of the Carnmore Copper Company—a direct challenge against themselves and South Wales—had turned George’s rather general animosity with the man into a full-blown feud. Now, Carnmore didn’t have a leg to stand on, their pride and joy—the _Queen Charlotte_ —was near ready to set sail on its maiden voyage and, all in all, everything seemed to be going well for the Warleggans. George told himself that it was enough to satisfy him.

A few days before the _Queen Charlotte_ was due to set sail, George was summoned to the residence of a particularly old client by the name of Mr Nankivell so that he could put his affairs in order before he passed away. It was at times like this that George dearly wished that the original Nankivells—an ancient though never very rich family—had not chosen to build their home on Bodmin Moor. Even Bodmin itself was a long journey from Cardew, but traversing the moor to get to the Nankivell residence—a reasonably-sized stone cottage, not unlike Nampara in its appearance and somewhat isolated location—was infinitely more tricky and time-consuming. Trigg had suggested that he take the carriage there, but he had refused. Those lands were easier to navigate on horseback, and it was a fine summer’s day in any case, so he could not see that there was much danger in such a trip.

The journey, as he had predicted, was long and tiring, and as such he had set off early in the morning to make good time. The meeting itself was rather irritatingly short considering the amount of time and effort it had taken to get there, though George could not blame the man himself for it. He had seemed rather cheerful, all in all, considering what the subject of George’s visit had been and, after a short rest, he had been able to head off back to Truro some time in the early afternoon, keen to get away from this barren place and back to civilisation, where his uncle and cousin would undoubtedly be waiting whilst they oversaw the preparations for the _Queen Charlotte’s_ maiden voyage.

It was about a quarter of an hour into his ride when he first heard the noise. At first he thought it was nothing but the howl of the wind—it was strong today up on the moor, whipping at the tail of his coat and rushing in his ears almost painfully—but after a few moments of listening to it, he realised it was something else entirely. It was a high-pitched, piercing wail, carrying right over the roar of the wind—an eerie, unnerving sound that made him shift uncomfortably in his saddle and grip the reins more tightly in his hands. It was fluctuating in pitch as well, he noticed and, all of a sudden, he realised that someone—or something—was singing.

George glanced around, trying to find the owner of the voice, but all he saw around him was empty moorland. The wind whipped sharply through the grass and sent a shiver up his spine. Despite the defeaning level it had reached, he could still hear that strange, otherworldly, wailing song as clearly as ever. It seemed to be coming from all around him, echoing off surfaces that were not there and filling his ears until he thought he might go mad. He felt suddenly faint, and he bent double over his horse, sucking in deep breaths in an attempt to quell the dizziness in his head.

A few terrifying moments and then the singing began to fade in volume, still there in the background but quieter, less intrusive. George gasped for breath, his whole body trembling ever so slightly as he pushed himself back into sitting position, raising up a shaking hand to straighten his hat, which had almost fallen off his head. He sat still for several long minutes, trying to calm the painful thudding of his heart and then, once he had mastered himself to a reasonable extent, coaxed his horse onwards a little gingerly, trying to ignore the faint sound of the voice that was still, despite everything, easily heard above the wind.

A little while later, he came to the crest of a hill, the moor stretching out before him as far as the eye could see. To his left in the middle distance were a cluster of large, smooth, bare rocks, formed so that they looked like towers of giant pebbles. From that direction, a stream trickled towards him, turning a bend and flowing adjacent to the path he was riding along, the water brown from the peat. None of this, however, was what truly caught his attention. No, what he noticed first was the young woman, bent over the stream and determinedly washing a pristine white shirt in the filthy water. She was singing, her voice a little more than a whisper, but it managed to reach George’s ears with a piercing clarity nonetheless, and the words were in no language that he could identify.

His horse took another step forward and the woman, plainly having heard the stamp of hooves on the ground nearby, stopped singing abruptly, leaping to her feet and whirling around to face him. For one long moment, they both froze, scrutinising each other with identical expressions of shock on their faces. She was a very beautiful woman, George couldn’t help but notice—tall and slender with long, dark hair tied into two plaits framing her pale, fine-boned face, and soft, green eyes shot with golden-brown. Her attire was rustic, if a little odd, clad in nothing but a long, cream gown made of some rough fabric that George could not identify, with wide open sleeves that tapered up to her elbows, and there were what looked like dried ferns, beads and feathers woven into her hair. She was watching him warily and, no matter how odd her appearance, or how eerie her singing had been, he instantly felt the urge to apologise to her.

“Oh, forgive me, ma’am,” he said. “I did not mean to startle you.”

For one long moment, the woman watched him searchingly, something akin to confusion, and something else which he could not decipher, flashing across her elegant features. Then, her face broke into a smile—small and a little cautious, but there nevertheless.

“It is no matter,” she replied and George couldn’t help but notice that her speaking voice was very different to her singing one—softer and gentler and far more pleasant on the ears. “I simply did not expect to see anyone else here. Are you lost?”

She looked a little concerned at this, twisting the sodden shirt in her hands in a slightly nervous gesture. There was a waistcoat too, he suddenly saw, and a fine one at that—a deep navy and made of silk. Upon seeing this, he was struck with an almost unbearable curiosity. How had she come by such a thing? And more to the point, why on earth was she washing two pieces of immaculate men’s clothing in a stream in the middle of nowhere?

“No, I know my way, thank you,” he replied, quick to reassure her. “But…might I ask what it is that you’re doing?“

“I am washing these clothes” replied the woman simply, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to wash gentlemen’s clothing in streams up on Bodmin Moor.

“In a muddy stream?,” pointed out George, confused. “Is that not a little counter-intuitive to your ultimate goal?”

The woman’s lip quirked slightly in amusemnt, although George thought there was something a little bittersweet about the expression. He wondered what she would look like if she smiled fully, and had just come to the conclusion that it would probably enhance her beauty tenfold before he began to wonder instead why he was thinking of such a thing in the first place.

“That would depend on what my ultimate goal is” she returned, and there was something a little sad in her tone, something a little lonely, despite the coy nature of the words.

She moved a little away from the stream as she said this, and a little closer to the path, hiking up her skirts a little as she did so. It was then that George, whose gaze had been following her progress, noticed something very odd.

“But your feet are bare, ma’am,” he cried, staring down at where her peat-caked toes peeked out from under the muddy hem of her dress. “Are you not cold?”

An odd expression flashed across her face, not unlike the one that she had briefly worn when he had first spoken to her—and one that was far too complex for him to possibly hope to interpret. It lingered for a moment longer before it melted, her lips curving into a soft, reassuring smile as she gazed up at him.

“You need not concern yourself,” she replied gently, “though I thank you for taking the trouble. I do not feel the cold.”

Despite the peculiar sincerity with which she said this, George remained unconvinced by her answer. He could not imagine, even on a warm summer’s day such as this one, that traversing Bodmin Moor without so much as a scrap of clothing on one’s feet was particularly pleasurable, and even if she were, as she claimed, hardier than she first appeared, he could not believe that her shoeless state did not at least trouble her a little.

“Well, do you at least have some means of returning home?” he asked her, glancing around him at the surrounding landscape. There wasn’t a dwelling in sight—nothing but the rolling expanse of grasss and gorse and moorland, and the broad, bright sky above it.

For a moment he wondered why he was so determined to assure himself of her wellbeing. He had never lied to himself about what kind of person he was and, though he hoped he had not yet reached the point of being habitually cruel, as his uncle was, he had never had much interest in the welfare of strangers, so why it should be different for her, he did not know. Perhaps it was something about the look in her green-brown eyes, soft and sad and lonely, never quite fading even when she smiled. Or perhaps it was the refreshing honesty in her manner when she spoke with him—so used was he to the pandering of near bankrupt nobles begging him to reverse their fortunes, only to sneer at the presence of the upstart grandson of a blacksmith amongst them the moment his back was turned. Or maybe it was simply the gentle, open compassion in her gaze as she regarded him that had made him wish to return the gesture in kind. Well, whatever it was, it had lodged itself deep in his mind, and he was unable to stop the worry from gnawing at his gut at the sight of her alone on the moor, despite her own apparent lack of concern for her situation.

“Oh I shall be alright,” she returned, her smile broadening and her head ducking a little shyly—she seemed unusually pleased by his attentions, for all that the emotion appeared to be mixed with many others. “I know the moors well, and besides, I do not live too far away from here.”

George raised an eyebrow, his expression sceptical.

“In that case, ma’am, our definitions of far must differ wildly,” he said. “The only signs of civilisation here appear to be yourself and myself.”

The woman laughed, soft and clear and gentle. It was a pleasant sound, he thought before he could stop himself—altogether different from the eerie, almost unearthly tones of her singing.

“Well you can never tell with this place,” she returned, a glint of mischief in her eyes. “There could well be an entire settlement of people just over that ridge.”

“And are there?” asked George, unable to keep himself from matching her slightly playful tone, though he was not entirely sure why.

The woman chuckled again.

“Admittedly not,” she conceded, her tone conciliatory now that she had had her fun, “but my home is close at hand, albeit out of sight.”

She was being truthful, he could tell, though he could not discern what she meant by those words. Perhaps her home really was just out of sight, and she considered it no great distance from the stream and back, even with her bare feet. In any case, she seemed to have spoken her final word on the matter, and he decided it best to let the subject drop.

“Well, since I am not particularly well-acquainted with Bodmin, I must bow to your superior knowledge of the matter,” he replied. “And I fear that now I must also bid you good day, ma’am—I am expected in Truro this afternoon and should not like to be late.“

“Of course,” the woman said, though the smile had faded from her face, replaced by something rather sad and, if he were not mistaken, a little guilty. “Good day to you, sir. And…and thank you.”

George frowned, baffled.

“Whatever for?” he asked.

“For talking to me,” she replied, “and for your concern.”

George blinked, not sure what to say in return. The woman, however, did not seem to be done speaking. A pause passed between them in which she seemed to be struggling with herself over whether she should utter the next words, a deep frown etched between her brows. Then, she took a deep breath and said, quietly:—

“I am sorry, truly, about your cousin.”

Silence.

“I-I beg your pardon?” George asked, not quite able to register what she was saying. She stared back at him mournfully, the grip on the wet clothes gathered up in her hands so tight that it was almost white-knuckled.

“I said that I was sorry—about your cousin,” she said. “And…and I hope that one day, you will believe that I meant it.“

George frowned at her, almost as unnerved as he was confused now. Whatever could she mean? He only had one cousin—Matthew—and, though his reputation had suffered a slight blow after the discovery of his dishonesty at the card table, he, as far as George knew, was perfectly well. And besides, how would this woman—this stranger—know anything about his family anyway, let alone something that he did not know himself? He cast a cursory glance around at his surroundings, twisting the reins of his horse in a slightly nervous gesture, and suddenly found that he wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted to know the answer to that question.

“I’m afraid I do not understand your meaning, ma’am… Ma’am?”

He trailed off, bewilderment colouring his tone, for when he turned back to face her, the woman was nowhere to be seen. But where had she gone? As far as he could tell, the only place she could have concealed herself were the towers of stones in the middle distance, but she could not possibly have reached them in that time—he had only taken his eyes off her for a few seconds at most. He stared around him, baffled and a little uneasy. All he could see was the stretch of barren moorland surrounding him—no one and nothing else in sight.

“Ma’am?” he called again, tentatively.

His voice was met only by the sound of the wind howling across the hillside, having picked up suddenly as he had spoken, unusually cold for this time of year. He shivered slightly, a chill running down his spine. Best not to linger in this place, he thought to himself, for all that he dearly wanted to know where the woman had gone, and with that in mind, he spurred his horse onwards, steeling himself for the long ride back to Truro. Nevertheless, he could not help but steal one last glance at the spot where the woman had stood not moments ago, as if he were expecting her to return just as swiftly as she had disappeared. There was nobody there.

_Then why,_ hissed a quiet voice in the back of his mind, _does it still feel as if you are being watched?_

George swallowed, clasping the reins tighter as another shiver ran down his spine. This one, however, had nothing to do with the bite of the wind.


	2. Chapter 2

The ride back to Truro had been as long and as tiresome as George had predicted, and made him wish that he had just taken the carriage to Bodmin in the first place, as Trigg had suggested. This was not least because of the strange encounter that he had had on the moor. Once he had put enough distance between himself and the place where he had seen the peculiar woman, he had vowed to but it out of his mind and not to think on it again. Unfortunately, he had broken that promise to himself not moments later, when he found himself mulling it over in his head anyway. It had been nice, just speaking to her, his treacherous brain conceded as he did so, for all that her last words had cast something of a shadow over the conversation. He couldn’t remember the last time he had ever talked with someone so easily and openly, aside from Francis, and even their time spent together had become a little fraught recently, in part due to the difficulties his friend was having in his own life and also—if he were to be honest with himself—because of his ever-worsening feud with Ross.

Yet despite this, he could not help but be unsettled by her last words, not to mention her sudden disappearance. Whatever could she have meant by them? Perhaps, he supposed, she had intended to refer to the now infamous confrontation between Matthew and Ross during the ball at Cardew, where his cousin’s dishonest conduct had been exposed, but somehow, George did not think that could be the case. While talk of the event was rife amongst Cornwall’s gentry, the majority of whom had been witness to it in some way, he doubted that this strange woman would have known a great deal about the matter, and besides, the tone with which she had said those words hinted that her consolation had been for something of a far greater magnitude than a little social embarrassment. Well, either way he could not make head nor tail of it, and there was little use in lingering on something so bizarre, for all that his mind desperately wanted an answer to the mystery it had been presented with.

He arrived in Truro just as the afternoon was beginning to fade into the evening, tired and a little confused but, overall, none the worse for wear. Being the end of summer, there was still plenty of daylight to be had, and the sun was warm and bright as it beat down upon the harbour, where a cool, salty breeze blew in from the sea. It was to here that George headed, where his uncle and—hopefully well—cousin had said they would be waiting for him. As he walked along the harbour wall, enjoying the caress of the sea air on his face, so different to the harsh winds up on the exposed moor, and taking in the creaks and groans of the ships, the shouts of the men as they busied themselves with some task or other, and the smell of saltwater and seaweed that he was long accustomed to, he couldn’t help but feel his mood lift a little. He had always been attached to Truro, and right now, its uncomplicated familiarity was something of a comfort to him.

“Cousin! Haven’t been lost to the wilderness, I see!”

George turned to see the approach of Cousin Matthew, Uncle Cary following shortly behind with a habitually sour expression plastered across his sharp features. George smiled in greeting.

“I trust that I am sufficiently capable of following a path in broad daylight without getting mired in some bog, Matthew,” he replied drily, taking a few steps forward to meet them. “How are…?”

He trailed off, the inquiry half-formed on his lips. He found himself quite unable to complete it, however, for he had just noticed something rather alarming—something which he couldn’t quite believe he was seeing.

“George…are you well?,” Matthew asked him. “Good God, you look as if you have seen a ghost.”

George blinked up at him, taking a moment to register what he had said. Once he did, he shook his head slightly in a vague attempt to clear it, dearly wishing that, with such an action, he could dislodge the undesirable train of thought that was rapidly taking root in his brain.

“I…I am fine, Matthew,” he lied, perhaps not as convincingly as he would have liked, not least because his eyes were still firmly fixed upon the cause of his sudden distress. “I am simply a little tired—that is all.”

“So tired that your attention has been taken entirely by my waistcoat?,” returned Matthew wryly. “I was pleased with the purchase myself but even I do not consider it to be that arresting!”

George shook himself and, with some considerable effort, tore his eyes away from the man’s attire and up towards his face.

“Oh…forgive me, cousin. It seems I am a little distracted this evening.”

“That much is clear,” groused Uncle Cary, who had, up until now, been watching the exchange with no small measure of exasperation. “But perhaps if you can bear to redirect your attentions towards more important matters, we have business to attend to.”

“I…yes, uncle, of course” George replied, seeing the dangerous glare the man was throwing his way. With a put-upon “hmph”, Cary turned and strode swiftly away. Matthew and George followed, the former amused and the latter disquieted. It was perhaps well that neither his uncle nor his cousin had seen fit to properly dwell on his momentary lapse, he considered, for if they had known what thoughts were currently racing through his mind, they would surely think he had succeeded in overtaxing himself to the point of inducing temporary insanity. George himself was not sure what they could possibly mean, but one thing was undeniable: Matthew was wearing the very same clothes that he had seen in the grasp of the woman in the moors.

 

* * *

 

The moon was huge in the sky above Bodmin Moor that night, its silvery light drowning out the twinkling stars that sat alongside it in the deep black sky, and illuminating the rolling expanse of the land beneath it so brightly that any traveller who might have been treading the old paths would have needed no other aid to show them the way. There were, however, no travellers abroad on the moor at that time. The only person in sight was a lone figure—that of a woman—making her way along a thin, winding stream towards the rocky tor sat in the middle distance, silhouetted against the moonlight. She was a tall woman, slim, elegant and—to any human observers that had seen her in the past—dressed rather strangely. Amongst her own kind, her attire would have fetched little comment, however, for all that it was rare to come into contact with another of her people—nor, indeed, all that desirable.

The woman sighed, hiking up her muddy skirts as she began to make her ascent up towards the top of the tor. She didn’t feel the cold of the sodden peat seeping between her toes, nor the pain of the rough stone under the unprotected yet unblemished soles of her feet. In truth, she felt very little at all in that regard—she herself was not a creature of warmth, and was thus all too accustomed to such things to take much notice of them even if she were able to properly experience them. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to feel those things—humans were such fragile creatures (the consequences of which she was all too intimately acquainted with), and she did not know how they could bear to be constantly beset by sensation—but now was not the time to think those thoughts. Not out here on the moor, basked in moonlight.

With some small effort on her part, the woman reached the top of the tor. She stood silently for a while taking in her surroundings from her vantage point, bathed in silver and drained of colour in the darkness. This was, by all rights, her time—deep into the night—but, for all that she could appreciate the beauty of it, it was not something she could revel in. It was too bleak, too empty, and though there were many who claimed that that, according to her nature, should please her, she found no joy in her solitude.

As she stared out over the dark horizon, there was not another soul in sight, living or otherwise—none to see her disappear as she passed straight through rock and into her concealed home, her own little pocket of space that was adjacent to put not quite part of the world above her. It resembled a cave of sorts, firelit and spacious, shadows dancing over the small treasures and magical objects that she had collected over the years, housed in grooves that had been cut into the walls long ago. Between those walls hung several thin cords, adorned with the shredded fragments of the clothes of those departed, and in the far corner sat a basket, filled with the garments of those condemned, ready for her to prepare for their passing.

It was to this item that the woman made her way to, a grim sigh escaping her lips. She had never liked this duty of hers, though she never shirked from performing it. Humans died so easily—so frequently—and each time she was there to prepare for their departure from their mortal coil. Sometimes it was disease, sometimes starvation. In other times it was simple age, or a foolish accident. Worst of all, sometimes they were killed by their fellows, or had killed and were paying the price according to their people’s laws. With each death, she would wash the clothes of the condemned, tear them up and hang them up in her cave in their memory. With each death, she would sing for them in warning, but it would never be listened to, or even understood—death did not like to be robbed of its prize once it had singled it out, and there was little she could do to change that.

She had been kept particularly busy recently, much to her dismay. A dangerous, fast-spreading illness had gripped her territory with an iron fist, and she feared it would only deign to release it once it had taken a good half of the county’s human population with it. It was horrible, seeing the grieving families, or finding that an unusually small piece of clothing had entered her basket, the soul of its infant owner ready to pass on before they had even truly had the chance to live. Her mother would have advised her not to care, as so many of her kind chose not to, but for all she tried she could not do it. She loathed it—both the events themselves and how powerless it made her feel, for she knew that, for all the magic and knowledge that she had at her fingertips, attempting to temper death would have had as much chance of success as trying to turn back the tides.

Smoothing down the front of her dress in an entirely unnecessary motion, the woman sat down on the floor next to the basket, staring darkly into its contents. The once pristine white shirt and fine navy waistcoat only served to remind her of one of the reasons this melancholy line of thought had been triggered in her once again. The image of the young man she had met on the moor swam before her eyes as she stared morosely down at them, and she swallowed thickly at the thought of him. No human had ever spoken to her before. Most who saw her chose not to linger, knowing what she was and what that meant. The remainder, who were unaware of what manner of being she was, did not care to halt their journey to stop and converse with a strange woman washing shirts out on the moor, and paid her no mind. And yet he had been different. He had not only spoken to her, but had shown concern for her wellbeing, however misplaced it may have been. She had been stunned by it at the time—so unexpected had it been—and with the shock of having been spoken to by a human still lingering in her mind, her thoughts now refused to do little else but dissect the entire encounter in the minutest of detail.

It couldn’t have been plainer that he had not recognised her for what she was, nor what her actions had signified, but that, as far as she could tell, was not unusual amongst some of the wealthier humans. It had, however, filled her with a horrible guilt which, try as she might, she had not been able to rid herself of. She had enjoyed his attentiveness, enjoyed having somebody else to talk with for once, all the while clutching the clothes of his soon to be dead cousin in her hands. Perhaps that had been what had prompted her to give him her condolences, for all that he would not understand them until the event itself occurred. Once he did, he would likely guess what she was, she supposed, and with a disappointed stab in her gut, she realised that she would probably never see him again.

Well, she thought to herself with another heavy sigh, it had been nice to have a little company, if only for a time. But now, staring down at the clothes of the young man’s cousin, she had to concede that it had only made her duty harder. Before, she had cared out of principle, due to the idea that the loss of life before one’s time was inherently repellent, but now that she had met and spoken with—and indeed rather liked—a loved one of one of the men condemned to death, it felt so much more awfully repugnant to her, almost as if the man’s blood, and with it his family’s grief, were on her hands.

It didn’t help that he, as far as she could tell, had had more than his fair share of grief. She, like all others of her kind, could see the passing of loved ones in the lives of all humans, and from this she knew that death often had its favourites among certain families. This young man’s family, unfortunately, seemed to be one of them. She could see that he had lost both his parents as a child—a highly unpleasant but not uncommon occurrence amongst humans, for all that she wished it were otherwise. Staring up at the lines strung with fabric—memories of those who had already passed—she wondered how that must have affected him—while she could see the bare facts of what had happened, she could not see into men’s hearts. She could guess though, she reminded herself as she thought of the muted, lonely look in his eyes that she had seen far too often in her own reflection. Would the death of his cousin worsen that look? Yes, yes she thought it would. Humans valued family far more highly than her kind did after all.

Scowling, she shoved herself to her feet, staring around at her empty, empty surroundings. She hated it—hated that she knew all this, all these deeply personal parts of his life, simply through the virtue of what she was, and yet she did not even know his name. And yet this was the task she had been given, her only purpose in life—one which she must fulfill, for what was she if she didn’t? She was well beyond hoping that it did not have to be all she was, for she existed invisible, unseen by the living and outside the realm of the dead. But now she _had_ been seen—not just seen but noticed—and, not for the first time in her long existence, she wanted more.

 

* * *

 

George did not think a great deal on his realisation in the coming days. True, he had been a little shaken by it at the time, but had the woman on the moor not said those parting words to him, he doubted he would have made much of it, if at all. After all, it was nothing short of ridiculous to think that only one gentleman could own a dark blue waistcoat at any one time. No, it had simply been a flight of fancy that he did not in the least care to indulge and, busy with the preparations for the maiden voyage of the _Queen Charlotte_ and the thorough thwarting of the Carnmore Copper Company, it was the easiest thing in the world to put it out of his mind. He was soon shaking his head at himself when he thought back to it—honestly, he liked to think that he was, in general, a rational man, and he didn’t particularly care for his brief stint acting as a hysterical heroine of one of Mrs Radcliffe’s novels.

This, however, was not to last. It was the night before the _Queen Charlotte_ was due to set sail, and the Warleggans were partaking in a private meal at Cardew, both in celebration of their achievement and to see Matthew, who intended to sail with the ship in the morning, off. George wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to the rather dry conversation his two relatives were engaged in, lost in his own thoughts, but he was brought sharply out of his reverie when his cousin cut himself off mid-sentence, a frown etched upon his face.

“What the deuce is that sound?” he grumbled suddenly, twisting in his chair to stare out of the window in consternation.

“What sound?” Cary asked, taking—in George’s opinion—an overly liberal swig from his wine glass.

“Can you not hear it?,” Matthew asked, his frown deepening as he turned back to his two dinner companions. “I think it is coming from outside.”

“Bah! In that case it could be anything,” Cary snorted. “We are in the middle of the countryside—you hear all sorts of odd sounds all the time here. No doubt it’s far from what you’re used to, but it’s nothing to fret over.”

George, however, was just beginning to hear the sound too—a quiet, wailing song that somehow managed to pierce straight through Cardew’s thick walls and into their ears. Or at least his and Matthew’s ears, for his uncle didn’t seem to be paying the noise any mind whatsoever. The moment he heard it, he nearly dropped his fork in shock, his mind taking him back to when he ha last heard that very sound, and his meeting with its source. But no. Surely not. She couldn’t be— It didn’t—

“As you say” Matthew shrugged, and seemed to put the sound out of his mind, apparently oblivious to the effect it was having on his younger cousin. Cary huffed in what could have been anything from consternation to amusement at the response, draining the dregs from his glass.

George, busy straining his ears to decipher the sound, started when an entirely different noise, much more immediate than the first, interrupted him in his aim. With a high-pitched whine, Ambrose scampered into the room in a frenzied panic thought would perhaps have looked more at home in a smaller dog—or at least one of a more skittish temperament. Ambrose had always been a placid, rather doleful animal, to the point where he might even have been called lazy, so for him to act this way—and for no apparent reason no less—was highly irregular.

“What are you doing, you daft mutt?” Uncle Cary scowled, shoving the dog away as he attempted to paw at his leg. With a resentful look at his older master, he turned his attentions to the younger. George reached down and scratched him behind the ear absentmindedly. The eerie, screaming song was louder now, he noticed, and clearer. If there had been any chance of thinking it had been his imagination playing tricks on him before, there was none now.

The wailing continued all through the evening until it was almost unbearably loud. Or at least, it seemed so to George. His uncle appeared to barely notice it, and though Matthew looked a little perturbed, he seemed similarly unable to focus on it. The only other inhabitant of the house that seemed as affected by the noise as he was was Ambrose, who had whined and whimpered throughout the evening despite Cary’s exclamations of annoyance, coming instead to sit by George on the divian, resting his head in his lap. George was not sure how much comfort he was to the poor creature—he, after all, was just as unnerved, and feeling none too well on top of that. He felt a little light-headed, and at some point in the night had broken out into a cold sweat, so that his hands felt horribly clammy against the dog’s shaggy fur as he petted him. He could only hope that he wasn’t coming down with an illness of some kind—or worse, the putrid throat, which Francis and all his staff had been struck down with at Trenwith, though the sickness had deigned to bypass Agatha, despite her considerable age.

The clock in the parlour began to chime, indicating that midnight had come. Matthew took it as a cue to announce his intention to retire for the night and headed upstairs. He was not the only one for whom the chimes had signalled something, however, for George noticed that the wailing had stopped very abruptly once the clock had fallen silent once more. Possessed of an undefinable, inexplicable urge, he stood and made his way over to the window, staring out at Cardew’s expansive, moonlit grounds, not entirely sure what he was hoping to see. Everything was completely still outside. No breeze stirred. Not even a single twitch from the leaves on the trees. It was then that he found himself remembering an overheard conversation which he thought he had put out of his mind long ago—a conversation about how the inhabitants of Trenwith had heard a strange wailing noise in the night, how Francis had thought it to be the wind, despite it being a calm evening. Above all, however, he thought about how they had heard that sound the night before Charles Poldark died.

 

* * *

 

It was some time in the afternoon when a footman came into their study the next day, bearing a letter which he handed directly to Cary before leaving the room as quickly and as efficiently as he had come. George barely looked up, busy pretending to be engrossed in a table of figures when he was in fact turning over both the awful news of Ross Poldark’s daughter and the strange meeting he had had with the woman on the moor in his mind. Both were somewhat trying subjects, albeit for different reasons. The former, of course, was obvious—to most people anyway, he considered with a rather sour glance towards his uncle, who had been quite happy to toast the infant’s death as the final blow to their bitter rival. It did not sit quite so well with George, however. For all that he disliked Ross, and for all that he had wanted to see him brought low, this would never have been the means he would have chosen to bring it about—the loss of one’s child was not a fate he would wish on anybody.

His other concern was more insidious, lurking underneath his other thoughts and preoccupations and surfacing at the most inopportune of moments. It was ridiculous, he knew—he had never believed in portents of doom or death omens or whatever that small, traitorous part of his mind was insisting the encounter with the woman had been, and he wasn’t about to start now. Matthew would be fine, and when he arrived at his destination whole and hale, George would no doubt feel awfully embarrassed with himself for thinking such absurd, hysterical thoughts. There was still a part of him, however, that refused to be appeased by such logic, and he was just attempting to stamp it out when his uncle’s enraged roar brought him sharply out of his reverie.

“Hellfire and damnation!” Cary spat, thrusting the letter forcefully towards him. George leaned forward to take it and, scanning the brief missive as swiftly as he could, felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

“It cannot be.”

He too was on his feet now, barely paying attention to his uncle, who was pacing to and fro like a caged lion. No. Surely this could not be happening. It was… He was dreaming or…or…

“Hendrawna Beach…isn’t that—?”

“Poldark land” George finished, but he wasn’t thinking of Ross, or the cargo, nor anything else that was likely passing through the other man’s mind at that moment. No, he was thinking of something very different and far more unpleasant, and, for all that his rational mind rebelled against it, that disquieting idea had latched itself firmly into his thoughts and refused to be dislodged.

The rest of the afternoon passed in much of a blur, in which they received constant news of the happenings on Hendrawna Beach. With each new missive, Uncle Cary worked himself up into a new level of fury, incensed at the thought of the result of all their hard work being plundered by the rabble on the beach. To his dismay, upon reading the letter, George found a small part of himself, rather than sharing his uncle’s rage, wondering in a detached sort of way whether Matthew would be drowned or killed in the villagers’ desperation to make off with the cargo. The rest of him was half tempted to burst into hysterics right there and then upon realising this, but the sane part of him (which quite frankly he feared he was on the verge of completely losing his grip on) suppressed the irrational urge.

“Captain Bray must testify,” Uncle Cary snarled, drawing his nephew’s attention.

“To what?”

“To the plunder and lawlessness. No, better yet—Matthew. He can testify against Poldark.”

“Always assuming he witnesses” sighed George. Thinking of Ross at least offered a distraction from his other dark thoughts, but considering all that had happened, and the news of his daughter, it brought him no consolation. He had not the energy to fight with his long-time rival, for all that the threat to the ship’s cargo had stoked that fire in his uncle more than ever.

“Whether he witnesses or not!,” roared Cary, incensed both by the events of the day and his nephew’s lacklustre response to them. “Good God, boy, you don’t suggest we wait for actual evidence?! Matthew is a gentleman! He’s a Warleggan—worth twice of any Poldark, and his word will carry twice the weight, and I’ll be _damned_ if we don’t turn this debacle to our advantage!”

He finished his piece with a fierce glare, before striding off to the window to stare out at the heavy raindrops spattering against the outside of the glass.

If George had thought waiting for the first missive had been a painful experience, the rest of the evening was positively torturous. They had sent a dispatch of soldiers to the beach in the hope of quelling the rabble, but received no specific news beyond general reports of violence on the part of the miners. This, understandably, did nothing to soothe George’s tattered nerves and eventually Cary, tired of his nephew’s fretting, snapped at him to retire for the night.

The wind from the storm howled viciously that night, rattling at the window of George’s chamber as he dressed for bed. He wished it would stop—the noise was abominable, and reminded him all too much of what the storm had caused, along with what he dreaded but did not yet know for certain. As the cacophony outside continued, he began to pace to and fro across the room, silk dressing gown clutched tightly around him and bare feet padding silently across the floor. After a while, even that became too much to bear, and he got into bed, tossing and turning in agitation, unable to keep that horrible, morbid anticipation from his mind. Eventually, he fell into a fitful sleep, plagued with strange dreams about storms, a wailing song that sounded like the howl of the wind and a lone woman out on the moor. He woke up the next morning to the news that his cousin was dead.


	3. Chapter 3

“Francis, may I ask you something?”

It was a few days after the disastrous maiden voyage of the _Queen Charlotte_ and George was sat by the fireside in the parlour of Trenwith, swilling a small glass of port absentmindedly in one hand. Francis sat opposite him, still looking tired and a little pale from the aftermath of the putrid throat, dressed in his shirtsleeves and wearing a dull and rather listless expression on his face. At George’s words, his eyes flickered upwards to meet his friend’s, and he frowned slightly.

“That rather depends on what the question is,” he replied, waving the hand unoccupied with his own glass of port in a vague gesture, “but I suppose I shan’t know _that_ until you ask.”

George was too used to Francis’ manner to be put off by the odd reply, and took it as permission to ask.

“At…at your father’s wake,” he began a little cautiously—Francis and Charles had always had a complicated relationship and he wasn’t entirely sure how the other man would react to him bringing the subject up, “I overheard something your aunt—”

“Oh you _overheard_ , did you?” interrupted Francis with a shrewd expression on his face, though the wry quirk of his lips belied his words.

“I happened to be attempting to distract myself from Dr Choake’s descriptions of the best ways to address the balance of the humours” returned George with dignity.

Francis snorted.

“I will concede that Dr Choake discussing his science is something to be avoided at all cost,” he said with a smirk, “but I was not aware that you found Aunt Agatha’s conversation to be much of an improvement.”

George did not grace this comment with a reply. It was true that he did not remotely care for the old woman’s company—a feeling that was by no means diminished by the fact that she had, as far as he could tell, yet to realise that his name was not “that upstart”—and it was also true that Francis probably wouldn’t have minded even if he said that she was an abominable harpy whose conversation he would only endure if it were somehow the means to preventing the apocalypse, but nevertheless, it still felt rather rude to admit it.

“Yes, well, as I was saying,” he said, wondering how best to bring the matter up without sounding as if he had lost his mind, “I heard her mention something about a sort of…wailing she had heard when…”

He trailed off, unsure of how to continue. Francis stared at him for one long moment, bemused, before he broke into a bout of incredulous laughter.

“Good God, George, whatever do you want to know about that for?” he exclaimed between chuckles.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” replied George quickly. “Something happened recently which reminded me of it—that is all.”

Francis, who still looked rather amused, regarded him searchingly for a moment before shrugging and taking a sip of port, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Well it was just the wind, obviously,” he said at length, “but she was obsessed with it—kept saying that it was some omen of terrible things to come. You know, she told us that it was a banshee, for Christ’s sake!”

“A-a banshee?”

“Yes, you know, a female spirit that goes around screaming outside the households of people who are about to die or washing their clothes in streams or whatever rot they’re meant to… Are you alright, George?”

“Oh, yes I-I’m fine” replied George, although he felt that the stammer in his voice had probably betrayed that he was, in fact, not fine at all.

“I always thought you were a better liar than that,“ snorted Francis sceptically. “You’ve turned paler than I am and you don’t have the excuse of having recently suffered a serious illness, so I’m afraid you have rumbled yourself on that count.”

George remained silent. Even if he told the bare minimum of the truth, without speculation—that being that he had seen a woman on the moors who, along with having a singing voice exactly as Agatha had described, had been washing his cousin’s clothes in a stream and had somehow known he was going to die several days before the event occurred—Francis would probably think that he had been subject to some sort of stress-induced hallucination. If he went further and said that that woman had possibly been one of the spirits he had just described, he would think him mad. Besides, George could barely believe that himself. It was too far-fetched, too… He frantically scrambled for an explanation, something rational and sane but…his mind, so used to the rigid order of finance and the harsh measures of schemes and advancement, utterly failed to come up with an alternative reason for what he had seen that day on the moor. He swallowed, staring morosely into the fire flickering in the grate.

“It is nothing” he said quietly, not quite able to meet his friend’s eye.

Francis narrowed his eyes, watching him sharply for one long moment before muttering a slightly grumpy “if you say so” and taking another long sip out of his glass, frowning. George watched him out of the corner of his eye, not wanting to reveal too much by making direct eye contact. Francis was unlikely to press for answers now that he had made it clear he did not want to give them—it was simply not his way—but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t find it odd, or that he might not later remember it at some inopportune time, and he did not wish to give his friend any reason to be suspicious of him. An uncomfortable silence stretched out between them, both of them staring determinedly into the fire, before Francis spoke again.

“What are you going to do about Ross?”

“What?” George asked. He had been caught off-guard by the sudden change of subject, and it took him a few seconds to realise what Francis was asking him.

“What are you going to do about Ross?,” Francis repeated, a slightly wary expression on his face. “He led the raid on the _Queen Charlotte_ after all, did he not?”

George’s heart sank. As much as he appreciated that Francis was not digging for the cause of his strange turn, if there were two subjects he very much wished to avoid, it was Ross and the _Queen Charlotte_. All he had been doing for days was picking up the pieces of that particular fiasco, to the point where burying himself in work could not distract him from the image of Matthew’s corpse, stretched out on the strand. As for Ross…well, if he never saw him again, he would consider it a cause for celebration.

“I have had enough of Ross,” he sighed bitterly, taking a sip of his port as he mulled the matter over in his head. “I don’t give a damn about what he does anymore. From now on, I will live in my world and he can live in his, and our interactions can be kept to a bare minimum.”

Francis looked sceptical, but he was telling the truth. He couldn’t deny that Ross’ words to him on the beach had hurt terribly, that they had lit a spark of rage in his chest at this man who dared to claim he cared for all men whilst acting as if he had the right to decide who deserved to live and who deserved to die. It would have been a lie to say that the spiteful part of him hadn’t desperately wanted—didn’t still want—him to pay for those words, to make him hurt in turn, to punish him for his unkind disregard, and perhaps if he had not been so occupied by something else entirely, he might have let it win. Instead, his mind had seized so absolutely on the strange and—in hindsight—rather disturbing encounter with the woman on the moor to distract him from the grief that he did not dare wallow in that that he could barely concentrate on the matter of Ross long enough to summon up the anger needed to lash out at him, let alone to form an actual plan of how he would go about it.

“So he is not in danger of any…retaliation?” asked Francis, sending him a penetrating look.

“Not from me,” George replied, bringing up a hand to his temple tiredly, “but Uncle Cary wishes to lay charges against him.”

That, he had to admit to himself, hardly encapsulated his uncle’s fury over Ross’ raid of the _Queen Charlotte_. He carefully kept the wince from his features as he remembered the man’s shouted words to him when he had pointed out that neither Matthew nor Captain Bray could testify to anything they had not witnessed, and later his barked orders to “stop moping and do something about that thieving wastrel”. The cruel part of him agreed wholeheartedly with uncle, but the rest of him couldn’t summon up the energy to care, and as such he suspected Cary would soon take matters into his own hands.

He was proved right the next day when, after going an entire morning and a good part of the afternoon without seeing his uncle, Cary turned up to tea with an entirely too self-satisfied look on his sharp features and, snatching up a crumpet from the table, explained what he had done, and what he planned to do to ensure that Ross was punished for his transgressions.

“Assaulting a customs officer?,” George asked, sipping his tea, a frown creasing his brow. “What evidence do you have for that?”

The first two charges had not surprised him—there were few people in the county who were not at least fairly certain that Ross had incited his tenants to raid the _Queen Charlotte_ of its goods—but that was the first he had heard of the man being suspected of such a thing on that occasion, for all that he—and indeed anyone else who knew the reason why he had been shipped off to the Americas all those years ago—was aware that the man was most definitely capable of it. As such, he began to suspect that his uncle had not deigned to restrain himself simply to truthful allegations, and all of a sudden he began to see the shape of the other man’s plan.

“None at the moment,” replied Uncle Cary with a pointed look, “but some can always be created.”

George shrugged, taking a bite out of his own crumpet. He may no longer wish to deal with Ross, but that spiteful part of him was strong enough to keep him from caring what was done to him. Let his uncle exact his revenge, he thought laconically. He may not wish to participate, but he had no reason to intervene either.

He barely paid attention to what his uncle was doing in the coming days, something which seemed to greatly confuse Tankard, who was used to answering directly to him in most matters. Instead, when his mind was not occupied by work, all he could think of was the woman on the moor, and what Francis had told him about what Agatha had believed the source of the wailing noise outside Trenwith had been. His mind grasped onto any explanation he could think of with an almost feverish desperation, but there were only two that he could hold onto for any length of time: either that the woman had indeed been a spirit sent to forewarn him of Matthew’s death or the—more likely, in his opinion—option that he had at some point misplaced his sanity and failed to notice it. Neither of these were particularly comforting thoughts, and as a result he slept poorly, his overtaxed mind making his dreams strange and disturbing. He wished he could talk to someone about it, to hear a reassurance that he had not gone mad or… But he did not know anyone he trusted enough to be able to confide in them about it, not even Francis, who was his closest and—if he were to be honest with himself—only friend.

_If only I was acquainted with someone who had some knowledge of such things,_ he thought with a soft sigh as he filled out the ledger in that silent, horribly empty study. An image of Agatha with her tarot cards flashed through his mind, fogged and heavy from lack of sleep, and he scoffed at himself.

“I must be more tired than I thought,” he muttered to himself, leaning down to give Ambrose a scratch behind the ear. “I would never stoop that low.”

 

* * *

 

The day before Ross’ trial, George and his uncle went to Bodmin for the election. The realisation that he had to go there—a place in such close to proximity to the moor—had prompted several mixed reactions in him. Would he find some sign there about what it all meant? Would the woman be there? Would he see her again? As a result of this, all through the carriage ride to Bodmin, he had no idea whether he should be dreading going there or wishing to get there sooner. In the end, he elected to focus as much as he could on the business at hand, that being ensuring that the candidate the Warleggans had chosen to back into parliament. After all, if he hadn’t been mad when he had seen the woman, he most certainly would be soon enough should he continue agonising over the matter as he had been.

Unwin Trevaunance, the man he had chosen to lend his support to perhaps, he admitted to himself, against his better judgement, was easily one of the most ridiculous men he had ever met. As such, he couldn’t help but be somewhat astonished when he was introduced to the man’s intended, Caroline Penvenen. He was not sure exactly what he had expected when he met her, but it had not been what he was faced with—the young lady was fiercely intelligent, with a bold manner and a razor sharp wit that he had immediately found himself being subjected to upon approaching her, and, he didn’t think he was presumptuous in thinking, a completely unsuitable match for Unwin. They couldn’t possibly make each other happy, but Unwin only had eyes for her beauty and her coffers. That was the way of such matters in the circles they moved in, though, George supposed, remembering that said circles would soon expect him to take a wife, and for that wife to be a lady of consequence with whom he could make a mutually beneficial arrangement.

“I must apologise for my niece,” muttered Ray Penvenen as the pair of them followed the couple as they left the hall to greet the crowd. “Caroline has always dearly loved to be shocking.”

“Think nothing of it” murmured George truthfully. He had rather suspected that her words were more intended to score a point than strike a blow in any case, and besides, he had heard far more malicious things from a good many people over the years.

There was a slight breeze in the courtyard when they stepped up on the stand, cool for the time of year, and George supposed it must have come down from the moor. He instantly stopped that train of thought, reminding himself of exactly why thinking overmuch about the moor and everything that came with it was a bad idea. This, however, was immediately undermined as, all of a sudden, he began to hear a dreadfully familiar sound, faint, but nevertheless cutting above the ruckus of the crowd gathered before them like a knife.

“Whatever is that noise?” Miss Penvenen, who appeared to be the first to notice it after himself, asked with a frown on her delicate features. She looked rather uncomfortable, he couldn’t help but think, and, after everything that had happened, he couldn’t help but sympathise.

“What noise?” replied Unwin disinterestedly, too distracted by waving at the crowd to pay any attention to anything else.

“That…wailing,” Miss Penvenen said, glancing around her with a slightly uneasy expression on her face. “It’s a bit like…well it sounds as if somebody’s _singing…_ ”

“Oh, that’s nothing to worry about, my dear,” said Ray Penvenen jovially. “One hears it all the time in Bodmin, especially during the Assizes. It is simply the way the wind travels through the town—that is all. The locals prefer a different expectation for it though—something about a creature up on the moors sending them bad omens or something of that ilk.”

“A creature? How thrilling.”

Despite her words, however, George did not think Miss Penvenen looked especially thrilled. It was a nice enough explanation, and if he had not seen the cause of the sound with his own eyes, he might have seized on it too, for all the fact that there was hardly any wind in the courtyard that evening somewhat contradicted it. But as it was, he had to accept that there was something entirely different going on, and the fact that at least two other people could hear the sound suggested that it was not, as he had previously been suspecting, a figment of his imagination. Well, perhaps he had not gone mad after all, which, when considering only alternative explanation for the phenomenon he had been able to come up with, was not quite as comforting a thought as it would have been otherwise.

The wailing became louder and louder as the evening progressed, and it was clear that it was having an effect on the crowd gathered to listen to the results of the election. There had been shouting before, of course, and an air of restlessness no doubt caused at least in part by the copious amounts of drink the members of the throng had been consuming, but there now sat a deep, fearful tension over the onlookers. George remembered what Ray Penvenen had told his niece about what the locals believed the sound to be, and could only suppose that this was, at least in part, the cause of the crowds new frenzied energy.

It was after he, having momentarily forgotten the screaming song that was echoing painfully in his ears, had bid Unwin to take the second chair upon drawing level with his opponent that that awful sound reached its peak. As it had when he had first heard it up on Bodmin Moor, it seemed to bounce around the courtyard and into his ears, almost deafening him. Once again, he felt faint from the force of it, and he surreptitiously put out a hand to steady himself against a nearby post. He could only be thankful for the fact that everyone’s attention was on Unwin, for he did not particularly like the thought of almost the entire population of Bodmin seeing him have a turn like a delicate lady out of a sensational novel.

“Oh don’t do it, please. Can ’ee not hear ’er screaming up on the moor?” he heard the voice of a woman cry as if through glass, or thick molasses.

“I b’ain’t a-feared,” came the reply—a man’s voice this time and, with a monumental effort, George raised his head to see that one of the crowd had stepped forward and was addressing Unwin, his expression stormy. “Who are ’ee?”

Unwin, typically, looked stumped by this simple question, but George couldn’t hear his reply. The wailing was so loud now that he could hear nothing but that mournful, unearthly sound. Then there was another voice—a woman’s. It was familiar to him—so familiar—yet far away, and he could neither place it nor hear what she was saying. His mind tried to snatch for the sound, to pull it closer so that he could figure out what that voice that he somehow knew but could not recognise was trying to tell him, but it skittered away from him, indistinct in the fog of his brain. He could barely hear it over the screaming in his ears and the shouting of the crowd, and—

All of a sudden, the wailing stopped, cut off so abruptly that he swayed on its feet at its unexpected loss. With it went the voice, disappearing deep into the recesses of his mind. The fog that filled his brain began to clear and, breathing heavily, he slowly began to take in what was happening around him once more. Unwin, he suddenly realised, was being pelted with horse manure which, while hardly the reception to the newly instated member of parliament that he had desired, did provide a mildly amusing interlude to the night’s events. As the redcoats rushed to intervene, George pushed himself gingerly away from the post he had been leaning on, his arm trembling from the effort. A glance around confirmed that Unwin’s misfortune had proved to be the opposite for him, as it seemed that everyone had been too distracted by the assault to pay any attention to him swooning up on the stand. He let out a shaky breath, schooling his features back into impassivity. Well, he supposed, ever cloud had a silver lining.

“That rabble!,” Ray Penvenen snarled once they had retreated back inside. “Have they no respect for their betters?! Or for the law?! Someone needs to take them by the scruff of the neck and-and— Mr Warleggan, are you quite well?”

George blinked, caught off-guard by the sudden change of subject. The other man had been working himself into such a rage that he had been sure that he would be more likely to burst from the sheer force of it than notice that his companion was not well at all. He was still feeling rather shaky from his turn outside in the courtyard and would, quite frankly, have greatly preferred to head to his lodgings and lie down for a while as opposed to standing in this draughty room where he was expected to smile meaninglessly, talk business and politics, and in general act as the unfazed, perfect gentleman he had always tried so hard to be. He blinked languidly at the other man, his exhausted brain scrambling for a reply.

“I am quite alright, thank you” he said, more out of habit than any particular desire to be believed. Unsurprisingly, Penvenen was not convinced.

“Nonsense, man,” he scoffed. “You look like you’re about to fall over where you stand.”

 “Perhaps I am feeling a little unwell” George conceded, too tired to argue the point.

“Clearly,” agreed Ray Penvenen, throwing him a scrutinising look. “You should probably take a rest. The main object of the evening is achieved, after all.”

“Yes,” replied George vaguely, glad that someone else had suggested it before he. “Yes, I think I will do that.”

After having made his regrets, he headed back to his lodgings, glad to have escaped the pressure and expectations of the crowd. The slightly musty air of the inn was surprisingly cool as he made his way a little unsteadily up the stairs to his room, the wood of each step creaking softly under his weight. A heavy exhaustion had settled upon him, so that he felt as if he were dragging an invisible ball and chain behind him. Eventually, he reached the door to his chamber at the top of the stairs and pushed it open, walking over to the bed and collapsing on it with a groan of relief.

He slept sporadically for a few hours, drifting in and out of consciousness but never fully waking. Sometimes he thought he heard the wailing sound again, faint and in the distance—so faint in fact that it could indeed have been the wind—though he could never quite tell if he had dreamt it or not, even if he had been aware enough to examine the matter during his fitful rest. Then, in the early hours of the morning, a deadly quiet fell around Bodmin, and George awoke properly for the first time, then, much to his chagrin, discovered that, no matter how much he tried, he could not get back to sleep again.

The silence, he thought as he lay on his back, staring up into the pitch darkness of the room, was worse than the wailing. It was the unnaturalness of it, he supposed—the screaming had at least been something he could identify, even if he was both sceptical of and a little alarmed by its believed cause. This quiet, however, was mystifying to him—Bodmin may not be as loud a place as London, or Bath, but it was never silent. In fact, considering the evening’s events, it was even more unusual. George swallowed, gripping the sheets of the bed tightly in his fists. It was so horribly empty—that silence—and, lying there in the blackness, he felt as if the world might have disappeared around him.

“Stop it” he muttered to himself, trying his hard to ignore how resounding his voice was in the silence of the room. It would do him no good to think these morbid, far-fetched thoughts—not when he had other, more earthly concerns to consider. And yet his mind, for all that he tried to persuade it otherwise, refused to turn away from them. He exhaled sharply, angry with himself for entertaining such notions. He had become as ridiculous as the old hag he so despised, seeing portents of doom in every little thing that occurred around him, and still his treacherous brain refused to discount the notions. Well, he supposed, scowling, there was only one thing he could do. He would have to prove it to himself either way. He would have to return to the moor.

 


	4. Chapter 4

It was so early in the morning when George set out from his rooms in _The Crown Inn_ that only the faintest hint of sunlight had begun to emerge on the horizon, casting Bodmin into a shadowy monochrome as he headed as quietly as he could down the main street towards the moor. He was dressed as finely as he usually was, his red riding coat an annoyingly conspicuous splash of colour against the grey—which, if he had not considered taking a horse from the stable far too noticeable, would not have been so much of a problem as he was beginning to fear it would become. As it was, he was horribly aware that his attire was hardly suited to hiking—not that he had thought there would be much need for any such thing when he had headed off to Bodmin for the election, even if he had owned the desired clothing. He was also aware of the fact that the closest he had ever come to taking such a journey on foot were his dismal cross-country attempts in his games lessons at school. All in all, the evidence suggested that he would be mad to attempt it, but he feared he would go equally mad if he did not. He would simply have to rely on his determination to find a definitive answer to his question either way, and if that did not work…well, he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

Bodmin, like most of Cornwall’s towns, was not an especially large place, and it did not take long for George to reach its edge. The stone dwellings began to dwindle away, and above them, the moor stretched on and on, wreathed in a thick fog that had risen from the peat below, still sodden from the summer’s storms. It was still partially dark, a half moon still clearly visible in the sky above, and George couldn’t help but be a little daunted by the sight. The moor had never frightened him before, though of course he had worried about having to traverse it in poor weather on occasions, as any sensible man would. This, however, was an altogether different feeling. Yes, he could not deny that the risk the fog presented, what with him being on foot, caused him some measure of apprehension, but there was something else underneath that more practical of concerns—something that he couldn’t quite grasp hold of in his mind. That something, he suspected, was not unrelated to his unease over the suspicions which had been awakened in him, and his fears—and hopes—of what he might find—or indeed not find—up there. It was largely irrational, he knew, but for all that he tried to suppress it, he could not shake off that lingering feeling of disquiet as he stared up at that shrouded expanse of moorland. He swallowed thickly.

It was not too late to turn back, a small part of him considered. Nobody would have noticed that he was gone yet. He could go back to his lodgings, attend Ross’ trial, perhaps try to find some satisfaction in it, for all that he knew it would have ultimately been a lie. A much larger part of him, however, was gripped with an almost feverish desire to know. He needed answers, needed to know that he wasn’t going mad. He wanted the matter settled, and if he chose to ignore his chance—however small—to find out the truth once and for all, he knew that it would eat at him until it became unbearable. It was that thought that allowed the resolve to take over him, and he set off up the path leading to the moor, his pace swift and determined, his fists clenched at his sides.

“You are a fool, George Warleggan,” he muttered to himself as he made the ascent, for though his desperation to find the truth one way or the other had apparently won out over his common sense, it had not overtaken him so completely as for him to be unaware that he was in the process of making a highly ill-advised decision. “An utter fool. If you wander into a peat bog and sink into the ground, you will only have yourself to blame. Good God, what a humiliating way to die, and I can just imagine what everyone would have to say about it. ‘Oh yes, did you not hear? Went up on the moor all alone to chase ghosts and got himself killed, he did. Perhaps some infirmity of the mind was to blame—such a shame, but what can you expect from the upstart grandson of a blacksmith?’ No doubt the Witch of Endor would make a great deal of sport out of it…”

He trailed off, stopping himself from launching into a tirade about the kind of amusement Agatha Poldark would no doubt find in his untimely demise. It was perhaps not wise to be voicing such thoughts, partially because taking his focus off the path to talk to himself was unlikely to make the chances of horrible, bog-related death a less probable outcome of this excursion, and partially because he couldn’t help but think that angrily ranting to himself up on the moor at an ungodly hour of the morning was hardly going to make him seem any less mad than he already felt.

Silently, he trudged on up the hill, his breath coming in short, sharp puffs, unused to such physical exercise as he was. The fog swirled thick and pearlescent around him, the moisture clinging to his clothes and skin making him shiver involuntarily. He kept his eyes firmly on what little he could see of the ground, making sure that he was indeed following the path rather than veering dangerously off into unchartered territory, not daring to stop even when his limbs began to burn in protest, in case he should lose his bearings completely and become hopelessly lost. Every now and then, shadows of rocky outcrops or small stone buildings loomed out of the fog to either side of him, but beyond that, he could barely see anything. Still, somehow, he knew that he was nowhere near his intended definition and so, despite that sensible part of his brain screaming at him to turn back, he persevered on.

He did not know how long this continued on for, but after a while, the fog began to clear as the sky above turned a deep, bloody red streaked with orange, before fading to a bright blue filled with pink fluffy clouds. His vision finally unimpaired, he slowed to a brief stop and turned to stare down the hill behind him. Bodmin appeared as little more than an inky scrawl on a map from his position high up on the moor, the expanse of peat and grass and rock all bathed in a hint of orange under the sunrise. Dew had begun to form, he noticed, and everything as far as the eye could see was coated in a glistening sheen of water, as if each blade of grass was coated in a hundred tiny jewels. It was a breathtaking sight, and if George had not been so focused on his aim in coming here, he might have been more inclined to linger on it. As it was, he simply turned away and continued on up the hill, determinedly ignoring the burning in his lungs and the stitch in his side.

Eventually, as he reached the crest of the hill, he spotted the stream where he had first seen the woman, the rocky tor sat in the middle distance like a great finger pointing up into the sky. He slowed to a stop, clutching at his side and sucking in several long, sharp breaths and remembering exactly why he had always hated being forced to do cross-country at school. Once he had composed himself somewhat, he straightened up and glanced around him. The moor was, with the exception of himself and one solitary skylark singing somewhere high up in the sky, was completely devoid of any identifiable life, let alone that which he had come up here to seek. That, of course, did not surprise him—he had hardly expected her to simply be there when he arrived, if at all. No, he would need no small degree of patience if he was going to make the most of this chance, and that would mean that he would have to sit and wait, for all that he had no guarantee that she would even turn up.

With that in mind, he headed over to the tor, picking his way carefully over the muddy ground, all too conscious of his earlier worries about falling into a bog—he had no intention of giving anybody cause to crow over that potential demise. Fortunately, he managed to find a stretch of ground that was firm enough to walk on, and he reached the rocky outcrop with far less difficulty than he had anticipated. Clambering a little inelegantly on top of it—and glad that nobody had been there to witness the ascent; he was really too short to achieve such a thing without hampering his dignity somewhat—he glanced cautiously around him, sat down on the edge of the smooth stone and, staring out at the rolling moorland before him, resigned himself to a long wait.

 

* * *

 

When the woman returned home after a long walk out on the moor, the last thing she had expected to see was the young man she had met by the stream perched expectantly on the edge of her tor, watching the birds wheel about in the sky with a rather tired look in his eyes. She froze upon spotting him, no idea what to do or how to respond. Fortunately, he wouldn’t be able to witness her indecision, for now that her role in predicting the death of his cousin had been fulfilled, she was as invisible to him as she was to everyone else. Of course, she could choose to reveal herself to him, allow him to see her, but she didn’t know if she dared do it. What if he hated her now that his cousin had died—or worse, feared her? After all, though she highly doubted that he had come here—the very place in which they had first met—without the intention to search for her, who knew what he was thinking beyond that? The more she turned it over in her mind, the more possibilities—horrible, unpleasant possibilities that made her cringe with misery—presented themselves to her until she found that she could not bare to face him. She couldn’t do it, for all that she desperately wished to speak to him again, and she felt like an utter coward.

She couldn’t bring herself to run either, however, and so she stayed, lingering awkwardly a short distance away from him, and regarded him closely. Perhaps she could just watch him a little longer—to gauge his mood and intentions in order to decided whether she should properly approach him, she justified to herself, wringing her hands together nervously. Surely there would be no harm in that? She thought of her mother, whom she had not seen since she had fledged into her full power and taken up a territory of her own, as was the way of their kind, and what she would have said if she could have seen her now. How she would have scorned her. For her mother, humans could be a passing curiosity, but of no more interest than any other creature belonging to the world of the living. _‘Some of them are pretty enough to look at, I suppose,’_ she had always said, _‘but they are far too fleeting to form any real attachment to. And besides, they barely notice us even when they can see us. If you are looking for a companion, you would be better served by a dog._ ’ No doubt she would have told her daughter to cease dithering over the opinion of a man who would likely be for the grave along with his cousin in a small matter of decades. But then, she had always had difficulty following her mother’s advice. She was too sentimental, she had been told—far too much so considering her purpose in this world.

She sighed, pushing thoughts of her mother out of her head. Now was not the time to recall such things—her mind was a bleak enough place at that moment without adding those to the mix. Instead, she turned her attention back to the young man, still perched on the edge of the tor as a small bird did on a high branch, his chin propped up on his fist as he stared pensively into the middle distance. He was a very handsome man, she couldn’t help but think now that she had the time to observe him properly. She had noticed that before, of course, during their first meeting, but she had been too caught up in her shock and excitement at being spoken to to truly take him in. Now, she had no such inhibitions, and her eyes traced his fair, elegant features with no small degree of admiration.

He had, at some point, elected to remove his hat, which now sat beside him on the rocky outcrop, revealing the dark blond curls that she had seen peeking out from under it when they had first met. He must have been there since early in the morning, she surmised, for the fine hairs were covered in a thin sheen of dew, the summer sun lending them a soft, golden glow from where it sat high in the cloudless sky. Dewdrops also clung to the tips of his pale eyelashes, glimmering in the light as he let out a soft, almost inaudible sigh, his eyelids fluttering slowly and briefly closed over his vividly blue irises. She couldn’t help but be a little mesmerised by him—of the few members of her own kind that she had interacted with in the past, all had been dark-haired, and as such he was the only person of his colouring she had ever seen up close.

Still, despite all this, she couldn’t help but notice that he looked rather the worse for wear compared to the last time she had seen him. His pale features were drawn in a way that not even the soft yellow sunlight could disguise, his previously bright eyes dull and tired. It appeared as if it had been a while since he had slept properly—or at least peacefully—and she felt a sudden measure of concern for him alongside the niggling guilt that she had been trying, with little success, to suppress. His grief hung over him like a cloud, plain as day to her eyes, but there was something else hidden amongst it which she couldn’t identify. Had she made things worse for him by giving him her condolences over his cousin’s death? She had not meant to do him any ill when she had said those words, spoken on the spur of the moment as they had been, but she realised in hindsight that they could well have alarmed him. Perhaps that was why he was here, she considered. Perhaps he wanted the truth—or wanted it confirmed. If that were the case, she couldn’t help but feel that she owed it to him, but what if it was the opposite? What if he wanted confirmation that it wasn’t true? After all, if she knew anything of humans, it was that they were generally inclined to fear the supernatural—especially anything relating to death, which they were so sadly susceptible to—whether they believed in it or not. Indeed, those who did not were even more inclined towards stubborn refusal to accept what they saw when confronted with evidence to the contrary, so it may be that he would not appreciate her giving him a truth that, for all she knew, he was not remotely inclined to want to hear.

She continued to waver in indecision, for all that she knew, deep down, that she was not going to show herself to him. At least, she wasn’t going to that day. Perhaps she would be able to pluck up the courage at a later date—knew, in fact, that her own worrying over the subject would drive her into it sooner or later, even if her desire to assuage the empty, relentless loneliness that had taken over her existence did not—but now was not the time for it. She may be uncertain as to what the ensuing conversation might hold, but she knew without a doubt that she would not be able to face it unprepared. As such, when he eventually tired of waiting, stood with a sigh and picked his way carefully back to the path before disappearing off down the hill, she made no move to stop him. She watched him all the way, however, even when he was little more than a red speck amongst the greens and browns of the moor. Once that too vanished from her sight, she allowed her shoulders to slump very slightly, for all that nobody would have been able to see her to judge her for the gesture in the first place, swallowing thickly. There was a sharp, painful pang of regret in her chest as she turned away to head up towards the tor, her head bowed. She would speak to him again. She would. Just not today.

 

* * *

 

It was well past midday by the time George returned to his lodgings, feeling tired, disappointed and, if it were possible, even more confused than before he had set out to the moor that morning. He had waited. He had waited for hours upon hours and…nothing. Of course, rationally, he knew that that likely did not mean anything. Rationally, he knew that he shouldn’t really be surprised. But his mind had been steadfast in ignoring all the rational thoughts that had passed through it recently, and this was no exception. Perhaps he had set his hopes too high when he had gone to the moor, so desperate had he been to get some explanation of what was happening—anything. Instead, he had got nothing at all, and now he just felt empty.

With a sigh, he shrugged off his tailcoat and tossed it over a nearby chair with far more carelessness than he would usually ever tolerate, but at that moment, he simply couldn’t bring himself to care. There was a hint of coolness in the room, despite it being a warm summer’s day, and he wrapped his arms around himself, as much for comfort as it was in response to the slight chill of the draught. He should probably attend Ross’ trial as well, he thought—his absence was sure to have been noted by now, and his uncle would likely be furious, but somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to care about that either. He was exhausted, he ached all over, and quite frankly, all he wanted to do was hide away from the rest of the world and sleep. Everyone’s reactions to his absence could be dealt with at another time, and besides, their focus was far more likely to be on Ross than him at the moment anyway.

Drawing one hand slowly over his eyes, he headed over to the little table in the corner of the room where one of the maids had left a basin of water and a cloth, brought at his request. He cupped the cool liquid in his hands, bending over so he could splash it on his face. Feeling a little more alert, he brought up the cloth to dry himself before lifting his head to regard his reflection in the mirror propped up carefully behind the bowl. Good God, he looked awful. The exhaustion was evident in his face, written in the drawn lines of his features and the dark smudges beneath his eyes. His usually meticulously neat curls, having been exposed to both the fog and the early morning dew, had dried into a frizzy, fluffy mess and, running his fingertips over his chin, he felt the roughness of stubble beginning to form there. The latter was not so bad—being fair-haired had its advantages, the biggest of these being that it was not immediately noticeable if he had missed one shave—but even so he suddenly felt awfully self-conscious at realising that he had been seen in public like this, and his urge to stay hidden in his rooms for the remainder of the day instantly doubled.

That decided, he allowed himself to sink down onto the bed and pull off his boots, taking the cloth still clutched in his hand and carefully cleaning them of the mud that they had become caked in from his excursion up on the moor—his uncle would no doubt notice if he left them in the state they were and would immediately become suspicious as to what he had been doing. Once that task was finished, he propped them up against the wall beside the bed and stuffed the now muddy cloth out of sight. Then, feeling a sudden wave of tiredness come over him, he allowed himself to lay down and curl up on the bed, resigning himself to the world of dreams...

_...The loud creaking of the house, accompanied by the wails of the wind and the crash of thunder outside easily drowned out the soft patter of tiny feet on wood as a small, blond-haired, blue-eyed boy toddled quietly along the corridor from the nursery to his mama’s chamber. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be out of bed—his nanny had told him he must try and sleep, and he wasn’t supposed to disturb Mama—but he had been frightened by the noises and flashes coming from outside, and Papa got angry if he bothered him when he was working. As such, he had made his escape, and was now making his way towards his destination as fast as his legs could carry him._

__The door to his mama’s chamber was ajar when he reached it, and he slipped easily through the gap and into the room. Mama was lying very still on the bed, her eyes shut and her face drawn and pale. She was always very pale now, and very tired too, he thought as he headed over to her. His nanny said it was because she was unwell, and needed her rest. Papa said nothing about it—he didn’t like it when he asked._ _

___“Mama?,” he called out tentatively. “Mama?”_ _ _

____Mama stirred, her eyes peeling slowly open as she turned to face him. She was so pale that she almost looked like a ghost, but her gentle smile soothed his fears nonetheless, for all that it was tinged with worry._ _ _ _

_____“What is it, darling?,” she asked, reaching to help him clamber up onto the bed beside her. “Is something the matter?”_ _ _ _ _

_His child’s vocabulary was not yet broad enough to express everything that was currently the matter, so he settled for a soft murmur of “scary noises” as he nestled into her side. She was cold—colder than she usually was—but he felt safer as her arms came around him and pulled him close._

_“I know, my dear, I know,” she whispered in reply, stroking his curls away from his face. “They scare me too sometimes.”_

_The wailing of the wind had drowned out even the thunder now, to the point where it was almost a scream, and he whimpered, burying his face in his mama’s shoulder. She shifted to press a kiss to the crown of his head._

__“Ssh, my darling, I am here,” she cooed gently. “These noises, they may be frightening, but they cannot hurt you.”_ _

___She began to hum a soft tune to him, one which she had once told him her mother had sung to her as a child. Soon, he was no longer thinking on the frightening, deafeningly loud noises outside, but focusing completely on her voice. It was quiet, weaker than it usually was, but in her comforting presence, he soon forgot everything else, curling up peacefully beside her._ _ _

____“You must be brave for me, George,” she murmured once the song had ended, and he could barely hear her voice now. There was something odd about it, he thought, but he didn’t know what. “Can you do that for me?”_ _ _ _

_____“Yes, Mama” he replied sleepily, snuggling closer to her. He thought the noises outside might have stopped, but he was no longer paying attention to them to be able to tell._ _ _ _ _

______“That’s my little soldier” his mama whispered, closing her eyes as she fell asleep once more. Safe in her arms, he too shut his eyes and fell deep into sleep…_ _ _ _ _ _

George jolted sharply awake, disturbed by a sudden commotion outside the window of his lodgings. He turned his head instinctively towards the noise, though he found that, unless it were the sound of a bloodthirsty mob being rallied to tear him limb from limb, he didn’t particularly care what had caused it. From this he saw that it was still light, though clouds had begun to gather over Bodmin, and the sun was no longer so high in the sky. He checked his watch, and saw that it was late afternoon. Had Ross’ trial ended? If it had, what would happen now?

His mind afforded him no room to speculate on that particular matter, however, for it was occupied with something else entirely. He had not dreamed of his mother for years, and when he did, she had at least been…healthy, whole, as she was in the portrait of her that he kept in his bedchamber at Cardew. In the dream he had just had, he had been disturbed to note, she had been pallid and frail, practically fading away. And that damnable noise, seeping even into his unconscious mind, tainting his memories…or imaginings… Whatever it had been. Had it perhaps been a memory? He wasn’t sure if he truly remembered anything of her anymore, so young had he been when she had passed away, but that…it had been so vivid, so detailed, so _real_ —

To his horror, he felt tears begin to prick at his eyes, and he desperately tried to force them down. No, he would not… But his mind would not cooperate. All the wild, bizarre thoughts that he had been allowing himself to contemplate against his better judgement seemed to suddenly merge with the grief he had been trying so hard to avoid, threatening to overwhelm him completely. His mother was dead, his father was dead, and now so was Matthew. His only relation was a man who, as far as he could tell, cared more about Ambrose than he did his nephew, beyond what use he was to him in business and in society. Francis no doubt hated him for his inaction in the face of Ross’ trial. He was alone. Utterly alone.

The thought struck him hard, and the tears which he had been attempting to suppress spilled from his eyes in a torrent that he could not stop no matter how much he tried. He curled up on the bed, pressing his forehead to his knees and wrapping his arms around himself, his entire form shaking with repressed sobs. He felt more like a little boy than a grown man, angry at himself for succumbing to such urges but unable to cease his weeping, for all that he desperately wanted to.

Eventually, his tears dried up and he sat motionless on the bed, his head pounding and his eyes sore and red. He swallowed thickly, trying to compose himself. Faintly, he registered the sound of feet stamping up the stairs, distant, as if he was hearing it from underwater. Then it was suddenly all too loud, and he panicked.

“How?! How has he managed this?!”

With a bellow of rage, Cary Warleggan burst into the room, flinging the door open so hard it reverberated with a shudder against the thin wall, the knob chipping off a chunk of the plaster and sending it skittering to the floor. George hastily wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his shirt, hoping with all his might that with all his might that his uncle wouldn’t notice that he had been crying. Cary had, over the years, made it clear that he thought such displays of emotions were beneath someone of his station, and that to succumb to such things reflected poorly on the whole family. He had learnt from a young age that, if he presented himself as anything less than heartless in his uncle’s presence, he could expect to find himself on the receiving end of the man’s disgust, and quite frankly, he felt pathetic enough already without giving Uncle Cary—who was evidently already in a towering temper—reason to turn his ire on him.

“All the evidence, all the planning, and yet that blasted jury still found him not guilty!,” Cary roared, stomping to and fro across the wooden floorboards, which creaked and groaned in protest underneath him. Luckily, he was so absorbed in his fury over the fact that Ross had apparently once again scraped himself out of trouble by the skin of his teeth, that he didn’t notice his nephew’s frantic attempts to compose himself at all. “A pretty speech—in which he admitted to committing two of the three charges, might I add—and the lot of them are swayed! Perhaps they liked the colour of his eyes.”

These last words were said with a sneer that was practically dripping with disdain. If he had been there, George might well have shared that thought, but as such, he had only the smallest idea of what had happened, though he could surmise enough from his uncle’s words and Ross’ history of somewhat implausibly managing to come out on top despite his tendency to ricochet dangerously from one doomed venture to the next. Yet even if he had been there, he doubted he would have had the energy to be incensed by it for long. He felt drained, empty, and Ross was the last thing he wanted on his mind at that point in time. Still, if it stopped his uncle from taking too much notice of him, he would endure it for now.

“I take it he is not for the gallows then” he muttered with a sigh, stretching out his cramped legs before swinging them over the side of the bed so that he could sit up properly.

“He’s not for bloody anything,” Uncle Cary snarled with a fierce scowl. “Which you would know if you’d been there. Speaking of which, where in God’s name _were_ you?”

George’s heart sank. He had not had time to think of a suitable answer to that question, and he knew that his uncle would be able to spot him dissembling from a mile off. Hell would freeze over before he told him the truth though, so try he must nevertheless.

“I think it is plainly evident that I was here” he snapped, wishing that he hadn’t sounded so defensive.

Cary narrowed his eyes at him.

“Not this morning, you weren’t,” he pointed out. “So where were you then?”

“I went for a walk,” George replied curtly—that was technically true, after all. “I was tired afterwards so I came back here to rest.”

His uncle’s eyes narrowed even further, and there was now a definite note of suspicion in his expression.

“You hate walking,” he said, his tone incredulous. “And you hate resting even more. What is going on?”

George scowled, snatching up his boots from the floor and pulling them on, glad that he had had the presence of mind to clean the mud from them. Of all the times that Cary could have demonstrated some basic knowledge of his nephew’s character, it would have to be now.

“Nothing is going on,” he returned, not quite able to meet his uncle’s eyes for fear of him seeing the lie there. “Doubly so, in fact, considering our aim of getting Unwin elected is complete and, despite your best efforts, Ross is still a free man. I take it we have no other business keeping us here?”

Cary’s suspicious squint did not lessen, but he gave him a curt nod nonetheless, turning his scrutiny elsewhere. George relaxed minutely. He wanted nothing more than to leave this sorry place, go home, and preferably not be seen for the next month or so. Nevertheless, for all that they had succeeded in securing Unwin’s seat, as he stood and donned his coat, staring out of the window to where he knew the moor lay behind the houses, he couldn’t help but feel as if he had never achieved less.


	5. Chapter 5

Some weeks had passed since Ross’ trial and the election in Bodmin, and the only sounds that could be heard in Cardew’s study were the ticking of the clock, the scratch of a quill on paper and the light patter of drizzle against glass as George bent low over the bank ledger, a slight frown of concentration etched upon his face. Ambrose, as was his habit, lay at his feet once again, dozing. George, however, barely noticed the dog’s presence, so used to him as he was. And besides, he was far too engrossed in his work to pay mind to much else.

The weeks after his excursion up on the moor had not brought him much good. He had come down with some minor illness shortly after his return to Cardew, which he expected may have been caused by his uncharacteristic trek, though in the interest of not having anyone know about that particular venture, he had not mentioned this to Choake—as incompetent as the man was, he doubted whether him being in possession of the full facts would make much difference to the effectiveness of his treatment. The complaint, though not serious, had lingered, largely due to his difficulty sleeping and diminished appetite, and as such he was unable to shake off the constant feeling of ill health that it had brought with him, and prevented him from having both the energy and inclination to be seen in society for some time. He confined himself to Cardew, tired and listless, able to summon just enough strength to be bitterly amused at himself for thinking going to the moor would have settled anything. All it seemed to have done was made things worse, and the only thing which could distract him from it was burying himself in his work, now that they were no longer so tangled up in the disaster of the _Queen Charlotte_.

Another sound—that of voices in the next room, brought him out of his musings, and he temporarily focused on them in order to determine their identity. The first was unmistakeably his uncle. The second, he realised after a little while, was Tom Harry. He could not hear what they were saying beyond the odd snatched word or phrase, and, his interest in the conversation soon abating, he turned back to his work, carefully placing a small stack of coins on the little scale that sat before him on the desk before making a note on the page in front of him. He didn’t have the energy to deal with whatever the other men were doing. He couldn’t even summon the conviction to care.

His and Uncle Cary’s relationship had worsened significantly since they had returned from Bodmin. The carriage journey home had been nothing short of excruciating—neither had spoken a word to each other but Cary had seen fit to glare suspiciously at him the entire time. Fortunately, his uncle hadn’t cared to pry any further into where he had been the day of Ross’ trial, but things between them had seemed to spiral downwards nevertheless. Cary was furious that Ross had, against all odds, succeeded in escaping the noose, and as the nearest and most available person in his vicinity, George had found himself bearing the brunt of his uncle’s ugly temper more and more often, something that was by no means improved by his increasing reluctance to continue to involve himself in the feud with Ross. On top of the empty, dull misery which he was already feeling, it was almost unbearable, and between the man’s sniping at him to grow a backbone and his shouting at him to stop sulking and make himself useful, all he wanted to do was sequester himself away in his chamber and hide.

However, his uncle was, unfortunately, right in one thing—he could not keep moping about at Cardew and refuse to step out into society again forever. As such, upon being invited, he had resolved to attend the Penvenens’ harvest celebrations at Killewarren along with Unwin, who, though he irritated him more and more by the day, at least provided a sufficient distraction from his other woes through his ridiculousness. Now though, with the gathering being held that evening, George was beginning to regret the decision. He wasn’t sure if he could face being around so many people for that length of time, many of whom often saw fit to sneer at his presence amongst them behind his back—and to his face before their debts to the Warleggan Bank had grown substantial enough to make that course of action inadvisable—not to mention that his uncle’s actions, and his own absence at Ross’ trial and a good many things after that would likely be a popular subject of gossip among them—both things that he had not the slightest desire to discuss with anyone. As such, he could feel a knot of anxiety starting to form in his stomach—a deep-seated dread which he had not felt about attending such an event since he had been barely out of boyhood, cowed by the insults spat his way and too shy to enjoy himself even if he had been welcomed.

He ate little that day, picking at the food which had been brought to him in his study. Nobody tried to make him eat more—as long as he didn’t start keeling over, his uncle wouldn’t give a damn, and the servants knew better than to remark upon it in front of him—and he barely noticed when the meal was taken away barely touched, absorbed in the repetitive, calming motions of his work as he was. Eventually, some time late in the afternoon, he put aside the ledger for the time being and went out in search of Trigg to ask for a bath to be run. With the knowledge that he would soon be back in the company of the members of Cornwall’s gentry that evening, he was horribly aware of the fact that he had not been maintaining himself nearly as thoroughly as he usually did, and as such was keen to make himself as presentable as possible.

Later, whilst he was undressing beside the tub filled with steaming hot water, he couldn’t help but think that that may be more difficult than he had first imagined. The sporadic, meagre diet along with the lack of sleep and the constant stress from Uncle Cary’s unrelenting criticism had not been kind to his body. He had lost weight, so that his slim frame now looked sickly, each of his ribs clearly visible as he pulled his shirt over his head and laid it neatly aside. Eyes downcast, he scowled at himself as he sank into the blessedly warm water, soothing against his taut, aching muscles. He felt weak and frail and disgusting, and he could only hope that nobody would see it in him as clearly as he did himself.

He bathed for much longer than he usually did, the pleasant heat of the water combined with his prolonged weariness causing him to fall into a light doze more than once before he came back to himself. It was, he supposed as he wrapped himself in the silk robe draped over the chair next to the tub, fortunate that he had given himself enough time to account for delays in getting ready for this evening. He continued to prepare himself at a measured place, the deep-seated exhaustion that ached in his bones not allowing him to make haste and, once he was fully dressed in his evening attire—a new burgundy tailcoat and pale, off-white embroidered waistcoat that felt, in his reluctance to attend the night’s festivities, more like a straitjacket than the expensive and well-tailored finery that they were—surveyed his reflection critically in the full-length mirror in the corner of the room. To his eyes, no matter how well he dressed, there was little that could be done about the raggedness of his appearance. If anything, in fact, he felt that the quality of his clothing only emphasised the drawn, pinched lines of his face, the deep hollows in his cheeks and the dark smudges underneath his eyes by contrast.

Letting out a soft sigh as he fiddled absentmindedly with the cuff of his coat, he recalled Agatha’s sneered words to him when he had first been able to afford such fine clothing, comparing him derisively to a child’s doll as she scoffed at his attempts to fit into the circles which he had found himself moving in. At the time, he had seethed with unspoken rage, tinged with the same humiliation that he had felt when she had compared him to a bull calf as a child, but now a small, traitorous part of him began to wonder if there hadn’t been a grain of truth to her words. He had never felt more fake, all dressed up for the approval of a group of overbred idiots who relied on their names instead of their wits, as if he didn’t know that, no matter what he did, he would never gain that approval—not truly. Never had all that he had strived for and achieved felt so hollow, so empty. He appreciated what it had brought him, of course—comfort, a financial security which precious few could boast of in this day and age—but what had it led him to? The chance to jump through hoop after endless hoop for the entertainment of these people, with the knowledge that they could just as easily send him crashing down if he gave them reason to, with no name or breeding to fall back on in hard times? The constant fear that one misstep would lose him everything? Though he had long thought himself resigned to it, he knew in that moment that it wasn’t what he wanted from his life, for all that he knew that he was powerless to change it.

He was brought sharply out of his train of thought as he heard the trundle of carriage wheels rattling along the driveway and, with a glance out of the window, saw that Unwin had arrived. Pinching the bridge of his nose and rubbing his eyes, he shook his head to clear it of those maudlin thoughts. Now was not the time to be pondering such things. He may not be satisfied with his lot, but it was all he had, and he would not neglect his duty simply because he was feeling morose over it. With that in mind, he gave his reflection one more sullen glare before carefully arranging his features into a bland, polite smile, turned on his heel and strode swiftly out of the room, closing the door behind him with a sharp click.

 

* * *

 

The harvest celebrations dragged as much as he feared they would. He endured Unwin’s idiocy for as long as he could manage, but, having spent the entire carriage ride to Killewarren alone with him, he wore George down far quicker than he usually did. He spent much of the rest of the evening conversing with various business associates and, somewhat alarmingly, a good many mothers and their unmarried daughters. He was no stranger to this, of course—he knew that the size of his house and fortune made up for his unsavoury family history in the eyes of many young ladies looking for a husband—but it did little to improve his mood. He did not have the energy to deal with them, though he tried as hard as he could to be polite. And besides, he did not wish to be reminded that he would soon be expected to marry—he was, after all, somewhat dreading it. He could not think of a single woman he was acquainted with whom he would wish to wed, but he knew that his uncle, if not the mothers of the district, would see to it that he did not remain a bachelor for long.

Managing to excuse himself from the constant barrage of conversation partners for a short while, he sequestered himself away by the fire to gather his wits. He had noticed that Mr Aukitt was present at the gathering some time ago, and had briefly toyed with the idea of approaching him—Tankard had informed him that the man seemed discontent with his investment in Wheal Leisure, and though George no longer wanted to involve himself in the feud with Ross, he had a nasty feeling that the other man would not be of the same mind considering his uncle’s actions against him—but in the end had decided not to. Reinforcing the Warleggans’ presence in the running of Ross’ one real asset would only draw him in deeper, when all he wanted to do was extricate himself from the whole mess completely.

A little later, he noted with mild curiosity that Dr Enys was coming down the stairs leading to the room in which they were gathered. He must have been tending to Miss Penvenen, he supposed as he watched him leave. George idly wondered if she had asked for him personally—he would have expected that the Penvenens would have been Choake’s patients if anything, and Miss Penvenen had seemed to have taken a liking to him in Bodmin—but his musings were soon interrupted by the appearance of the lady herself. Unwin immediately moved to go to her, but she pointedly ignored him, and it was with some amusement that he saw her step gracefully round the table and head towards where he stood beside the fire.

“Miss Penvenen,” he greeted her as she came to a stop before him. “I trust you are on the mend?”

“I am, sir,” she replied with a slightly wry smile; her eyes flickered slightly towards Unwin and he observed that the man was wearing an almost comically put-out expression on his face. “But what of yourself? I fear you have become quite the recluse, Mr Warleggan—I have not seen you at all recently.”

Despite the light, teasing tone, there was something shrewd in her expression that told George that, though he had been able to fool a good many others with vague statements about work taking up much of his time, she would not swallow the lie. Still, he could hardly tell her the truth. That he wouldn’t have told anyone—not even Francis.

“Oh, I am quite well, Miss Penvenen,” he replied, trying to keep his voice light, “and I assure you that I am not seeking a change of lifestyle. I have simply been busy.”

The look in her eye suggested quite plainly that she didn’t believe him for one second. Fortunately for him, however, it seemed that she didn’t have much interest in pursuing the matter, and the conversation was soon turned to more pleasant topics.

After that, the evening progressed a little easier, but George still felt drained and exhausted when he finally returned to Cardew late into the night. The house was silent and empty, save for the one bleary-eyed footman who opened the door for him when he arrived, and he headed up to his chamber as quietly as he could, wanting nothing more than to go to bed, and preferably stay there as long as possible. Ambrose, who had been sleeping in the parlour, woke up and padded after him as he passed, following him up to bed as he often did. George paused briefly to scratch him behind the ear before continuing on his journey. He didn’t think he’d ever felt so glad of his company as he did then—the dog was at least…uncomplicated in his companionship.

The door to his bedchamber creaked on its hinge as he pushed it open, and with a hastily stifled yawn, George pushed it closed again, heading over to the chair and draping his tailcoat over it, a hand pressed over his eyes as the tiredness which had been eating at him all day overcame him. Good God, since when had attending a simple social gathering become so tiring? He had thought he had long stamped out that particular weakness, and yet here he was again, wondering and worrying and second-guessing himself as if he were still that shabby, mousy boy, terrified of making conversation for fear of rebuke, rather than a grown man who had proven himself a hundred times over. He scoffed at himself as he headed over to the window with the intention of drawing the drapes. One strange meeting on the moor and he was completely unravelling.

“My God, I’m pathetic” he muttered to himself, pressing his forehead against the cool glass of the window, his shoulders slumping as exhaustion seized him.

It was Ambrose’s high-pitched whine that first alerted him to the fact that he was no longer alone in the room.

He whirled around, clutching at the sill of the window so hard that his knuckles turned an icy white, his heart feeling as if it had leapt up into his throat. On the end of his bed was perched the woman he had seen all those weeks ago on the moor, dressed exactly as she had been during their last encounter and wearing entirely too innocent an expression on her face for someone who had, as far as he could tell, simply materialised right into his private bedchamber. Upon seeing his alarm, that expression turned a little apologetic.

“I’m sorry,” she said, watching him with a concerned little frown. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“How did you get in here?” George replied, not letting go of the windowsill. Ambrose, still whining and whimpering, skulked to his side, his ears flat against his head.

“I walked through the door” answered the woman simply.

George frowned in confusion.

“But I would have noticed if the door had opened—”

“Oh, well, I didn’t open it,” the woman replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I walked _through_ it.”

It was a testament both to the bizarreness of the situation and how much her sudden appearance had thrown him that it took George several moments to realise exactly what she was attempting to tell him. Once he had properly absorbed her meaning, he suddenly felt rather faint, and had to cling onto the windowsill even tighter to prevent his knees from buckling under him.

“You walked _through_ —?” he murmured weakly.

The woman nodded absentmindedly. Her attention had been taken up with staring around at the rest of the room, her gaze soft and curious. She seemed particularly interested by the full-length mirror standing in the corner to her left, and she stood and headed over to it, examining it with interest. George watched her cautiously, extricating himself from the far wall and heading slowly over to the bed whilst her back was turned. He sank down onto the mattress, feeling as though his legs would cease to support him at any minute, and, reaching down to grip the silk covers at the edge of the bed in his balled up fists, tried to make sense of the thoughts whirling chaotically about in his brain. Ambrose, not wanting to be left alone, leapt up on the bed beside him—something which he knew that he wasn’t usually allowed to do, but given the situation, George supposed he could make an exception—and rested his head and front paws on his lap. George let go of the bedding and reached up to tickle him behind the ear, the slow, repetitive rhythm of the movement soothing to his overwrought nerves.

“Who is she?” the woman asked all of a sudden, reminding George abruptly of the mad situation he had found himself in. He turned to look inquiringly at the woman and saw that her attention had been diverted from the mirror to the portrait that hung on the wall beside it. A lump formed in his throat, and he swallowed thickly before answering.

“My…my mother” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. She turned to regard him and her gaze, though kind and gentle, bore straight into him, as if she were looking right past all the layers and protections he had worked so hard to maintain over the years, directly into his soul. He cringed, fighting the sudden urge to run and hide.

“She…died when you were very young, did she not?” the woman murmured softly. George froze, staring up at her with wide eyes. He suddenly thought of the memory…or dream…or whatever it was that his mind had dredged up the day of Ross’ trial, and he felt a horrible cold fill his veins.

“How do you know that?” he asked, a little sharper than he had intended, and immediately regretted it when he saw the sad—albeit apologetic—look in her eyes.

“I am guessing you know what I am now, yes?,” she asked, and George nodded curtly in reply—even now he didn’t dare say it aloud. “Well, we can…sense death. I can look at a person and I can see how many of their loved ones have died, when and where they died, how they died… And when someone’s loved one is marked for death in the future, we see that too.”

George closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. He could feel his hand beginning to shake as he stroked it mechanically through Ambrose’s shaggy fur. It was…it was too much to take in… It was simply… It was just… God he didn’t know what it was. All he knew was that, if he hadn’t been able to confess what he had seen before this encounter, he certainly couldn’t now. A word of this to anyone and he would surely be shipped off to the madhouse.

“Why have you come here?” he asked, and he desperately wished, as he had intended when he had spoken those words, that his voice had sounded stronger, more confident, that he had been able to keep it from trembling as he put the question to her. Instead, he sounded exactly how he felt—vulnerable, exposed and alarmingly fragile.

The woman stared at him for a long moment, as if she didn’t quite know the answer to that question herself, and he saw something of that forlorn look had been present in her gaze during their last encounter on the moor. She moved slowly away from the painting and back towards the bed, stopping so that she stood a little to the left of him but still clearly in his line of sight. He tracked her movement with his eyes warily, still not sure what to make of her and her presence here.

“I…just wanted to talk to you, I suppose,” she replied, and there was an uncertainty in her tone which made him feel a little better about the lapse of his own façade. “I wanted to, before, when you came up to the moor the second time but…but I didn’t dare…”

George blinked up at her, nonplussed. Of all the answers he had expected, that had certainly not been it. His first instinct was to recoil from the confession. Why on earth would she want to talk to him? What did he have to offer her that she couldn’t find in any number of the infinitely more brave and interesting and charismatic men that the county had to offer? And yet, for all that his mind could not accept it, the open, simple honesty with which she said those words were undeniable, and he had no idea how to respond to them.

“So, you were…you were there that time?,” he asked, seizing on—in his mind—the least challenging detail which she had provided. “But…I wasn’t able to see you…?”

The woman nodded, her eyes flickering to the floor as she brought her hands together in a slightly nervous gesture.

“Humans can only see me if I choose to reveal myself to them,” she said, “or if…or if they or someone close to them is…”

She trailed off, but George understood perfectly well what she had refused to say. The lump in his throat was verging on painful now, and he swallowed convulsively, staring down at Ambrose and the repetitive motion of his hand stroking through the dog’s fur. It had not stopped trembling, he noticed, for all that he was desperately trying to still it.

“And the…song?,” he asked, not entirely sure how to refer to that strange, unearthly wailing. “Can everybody hear it or is it just…?”

“Everybody can hear it, but most choose not to notice it,” the woman replied, watching him with her head tilted to one side, as if she were attempting to figure out a particularly complicated puzzle that he had posed to her. “But you are affected by it more than others, yes? It can happen when the song is for a loved one of…a soul that is about to depart from this world or…or if the person in question has suffered a recent loss… It…dredges up memories of old grief, to my understanding, but I am largely unfamiliar with the ways in which the human mind works. I have never spoken with a human before you.”

So that was what that dream of his mother had been, he supposed. He wanted to linger on it, perhaps ask some more questions on the subject, but an entirely different part of what she had said was encroaching on his train of thought. No human had ever spoken to her before he had, and by the looks of it, her own people were hardly the kind to socialise regularly. How often did she have the chance to actually talk to another person, human or otherwise? It must be horrible, he thought, out there on the moor with no company other than her own and nothing to think of but omens of death and misfortune.

“Nobody has ever…nobody has ever talked to you before?,” he asked, staring up at her with wide eyes. “Not once?”

The woman shook her head, and he could see the sad, lonely look in her eyes more clearly than ever.

“Humans mostly fear me or consider me beneath their notice,” she replied. “You spoke to me though, and I thought…I thought you might know what it is like to be alone…”

The words struck him so hard that she might as well have dealt him a physical blow. She was utterly alone and, as he had seen it in her, she too must have seen it in him. What she wanted was so simple and basic and fundamental that he barely knew what to make of it—she wanted a friend. He thought of his own strained relationship with Francis, and the fact that she had been the only person he knew who had made an effort to console him over Matthew’s death, for all that it had come before the event itself had happened. It was a mad idea—completely mad—but then again, George couldn’t help but think that the relative sanity of his life had taken an immediate downturn the moment he had met the woman up on the moor anyway.

“I don’t know your name” he blurted out before he could stop himself, entirely unsure of how to proceed. Far from being disconcerted by the sudden change of subject, however, the woman sent him a shy little smile, though there was something a little melancholy in the expression.

“Nor I yours,” she replied apologetically. “Though I can hardly fault you for not knowing mine. Our kind do not have names. We know each other by the territories which we preside over, and besides, we usually avoid each other so there is little need for names among us.”

George took a moment to digest this, a small frown forming between his brows.

“Oh, well, my name is George,” he said. “George Warleggan. But…but there must be some name that you are known by, surely?”

“None,” returned the woman with a little frown on her face. “But why would you wish to know?”

“Well, at the risk of sounding presumptuous, you made the effort to come here simply to speak to me, so you must have done so in the hope that it would not be a unique occurrence,” George pointed out, watching her expression narrowly—however cautious and careful she was, she was still so very unguarded compared to those whom he usually associated, and as such he knew that every emotion that flitted across her face was absolutely sincere. “If I am to see you again, I can hardly call you the banshee of Bodmin Moor.”

The woman blinked at him, startled.

“You…you don’t mind if I…?”

She trailed off, staring into his eyes, searching for the answer to her unfinished question. Again, he felt the full force of her penetrating gaze that left him so open and vulnerable. This time, however, he fought the instincts telling him to squirm away, or attempt to hide himself from it, and allowed her to find the answer she was looking for. After a few moments, it was clear that she had found it, for her lips curved upwards in a cautious smile.

“Well I could always take a human name,” she said tentatively. “Do you know of any that might…?”

George frowned, running through a list of women’s names in his head that might suit her.

“Henrietta?,” he suggested. “Isabelle? Elizabeth?”

“Elizabeth,” said the woman with a thoughtful look on her face, trying the name out on her tongue. “Elizabeth… I like that. Yes, I like that very much.”

“Elizabeth it is then,” George replied. “If that is what you wish, of course.”

“It is” the woman—no, Elizabeth—replied, and for the first time, she smiled a full, wide, joyful smile and, as he found himself smiling shyly back at her, his mind couldn’t help but wander back to his thoughts during their first encounter up on the moor. He had woefully underestimated the effect that that honest, simple, happy expression had on her, he decided, for it enhanced her beauty more than he could possibly describe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who kept going with this fic! I do have a sequel planned for this AU but since I've by now lost count of the number of fics that I'm trying to write at once, it may be awhile before I manage to get round to it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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